King of Zembla: Two Wronged Women

Interesting.--Dictynna

Mike Meija of Online Journal draws on two recent articles by Christopher Deliso (here and here) to connect a couple of our favorite dots: fired FBI translator Sibel Edmonds and outed CIA operative Valerie Plame. The gag order against Ms. Edmonds was recently upheld by the Supreme Court, so she cannot directly answer the question Meija poses at the top of the story: "Was Plame's role at the CIA as a weapons of mass destruction expert critical, as old CIA hands like Larry Johnson contend, or was she just a paper pusher, as the pro-Bush crowd proclaims?" But the information she does disclose is quite tantalizing:

According to Deliso's two sources, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet and former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, the outing of Valerie Plame may have severely damaged a CIA operation to monitor a nuclear black market faciliated by the shadowy but well-connected Washington lobby group, the American Turkish Council (ATC). (Those familiar with the Sibel Edmonds case will know the ATC is the very same organization that the former FBI translator heard on wiretaps in connection with various alleged illegal activities, some connected to 9/11.) From Edmonds, Deliso obtained the following admission: "Plame's undercover job involved the organizations [the FBI had been investigating], the ATC (American-Turkish Council) and the ATA (American-Turkish Association) . . . the Brewster Jennings network was very active in Turkey and with the Turkish community in the U.S. during the late 1990s, 2000, and 2001 . . . in places like Chicago, Boston, and Paterson, N.J."